Del buen gobierno corporativo a la rendición de cuentas de las políticas públicas: Retos del Siglo XXI

Abstract

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by major collapses of consolidated companies and bankruptcies of auditing companies that supposedly carried out their work to protect shareholders. The issue of corporate governance, which had already been timidly being discussed, has gained importance and has modified the behavior of private corporations and, subsequently, also of public institutions. Greater control of published information, Good governance codes, Regulations and compliance systems have been modified or developed. This thesis covers a broad time frame in the Spanish context that goes from the approval of the first good governance codes in Spain and closes almost at the same time that the approval of the first public policy evaluation law occurred in Spain. in November 2022. Thus, this research work follows a structure with a format of three articles seeking to observe aspects of good governance, whether in private companies or in public organizations. Each of the three articles has constituted an empirical research work on that topic and with a specific objective. For this purpose, different quantitative and qualitative methodologies have been used, such as cluster, discriminant, regression models with the panel data technique and content analysis. The first article refers us to the discussion about the impact of the first good governance recommendations in Spain. The main objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between good governance mechanisms and the value of the company, in addition to analyzing some specific practices of companies that seek to minimize the agency conflict between managers and shareholders. The results suggest that compliance with the Olivencia Code has a positive impact on business results, as well as the communication by companies of relevant facts such as the remuneration of directors to the Spanish Supervisory Stock Exchange Commission and having an unqualified audit report. The second article deals with the impact of the ownership structure, as a good governance mechanism, on business strategy. Agency Theory suggests that managers who are less aligned with outside investors tend to design corporate strategies that pursue growth rather than value maximization. We thus explore the relationship between ownership structure and diversification in Spain as an example of a country that provides a particularly suitable setting for analysis, since there is evidence of weaker investor protection and the level of investment asymmetries. information is very high. The results confirm the theoretical relevance of Agency Theory in explaining managerial attitudes towards a particular corporate strategy, that is, diversification. These results also corroborate the relevance of corporate governance mechanisms in promoting companies' value maximization strategies. We find that several control variables included in the model help modulate the level of diversification; These include the level of debt and compliance with codes of good practice, as predicted by Agency Theory. However, a conclusive relationship is not detected for executive compensation and diversification. Finally, the third article has sought to make a qualitative analysis of the accountability of public financial education policy plans born in Spain, within the context of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Using the Content Analysis Technique, information on accountability was sought from the balance sheet documents of the Financial Education Plan 2008-2012, Financial Education Plan 2013-2017 and Financial Education Plan 2018-2021. The results suggest that the different plans have reports that still have characteristics focused only on explaining and informing, reducing them to the dimension of answerability, and equating them to the notion of government transparency. It is important to highlight that accountability must be legitimized even in the enforcement dimension, in order to corroborate the ethics and efficient management of the use of public resources. Thus, the research work developed in the thesis has sought, based on the fundamental theories in business economics developed during the 20th century - including Agency Theory and the modern conception of corporations -, to discuss the challenges that have been imposed in the 21st century, advancing the discussion on changes in the conception of social responsibility and correct governance of private companies and public institutions, a topic that constitutes an important source of learning.